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Thursday, March 16, 2006

Matt Dubay and Eminent Domain

A few months back, the conservative world was in an uproar because the Supreme Court ruled that the state has the right to take any property it wants if that land can be used to generate more revenue for the state. Matt Dubay’s lawsuit, in which he attempts to avoid paying child support on the grounds that he didn’t want a child, has an interesting resonance with that ruling.

According to CNN, “the president of the National Organization for Women, Kim Gandy, acknowledged that disputes over unintended pregnancies can be complex and bitter. ‘None of these are easy questions,’ said Gandy, a former prosecutor. ‘But most courts say it's not about what he did or didn't do or what she did or didn't do. It's about the rights of the child.’ ”

Confusion from the Leaders

Indeed? What child would that be, Ms. Gandy? According to the National Organization of Women, the decision to have sex is not a decision to have a child. There is no child at the moment of conception. There is no child, really, until birth. How can Matt Dubay be responsible for a child he didn’t create?

According to the most modern, cutting-edge definitions of sexual responsibility, pregnancy and personhood, Mr. Dubay most emphatically did not create a child nor had he anything to do with the creation of a child.

Abortion supporters insist the act of sex does not create responsibility towards a future child. If it did, no one could support abortion. Legal abortion is grounded in the idea that something which does not yet have its own existence does not yet have any rights. Thus, abortion supporters take great pains to explain why the tissue mass in the womb is not really a child.

It doesn’t have a heartbeat (except it does by the 22nd day after conception).

It doesn’t have brainwaves (except it does by the 42nd day).

It can’t feel pain (except it can by the 7th week, in fact, between 20 and 30 weeks gestation, the tissue mass is more susceptible to pain than a born child).

So, to parrot the pro-choice position, how can Matt Dubay have responsibilities towards a tissue mass? Towards something smaller than your thumb? Smaller than a grain of rice? How can he have responsibilities towards a fertilized egg that doesn’t even exist until hours after he has withdrawn from the woman, withdrawn from the bedroom, gotten dressed and gone home to wash his car? Conception happens hours, sometimes days, after having sex.

Even so, life does not begin at conception, remember? One hundred years ago, fifty years ago, even a decade ago, pregnancy began at conception. Today, it begins at implantation. Today, women aren’t pregnant with children, they are pregnant with undifferentiated tissue masses, tissue masses that are nearly as marvelous a source of stem cells as menstrual blood.

Stem cells and abortion. That’s why we changed the definition of when life and pregnancy began, remember? So we could tear apart those little tissue masses and steal, ahem, borrow, excuse me, use their stem cells. What? Oh, sorry. I meant use the stem cells.

Confusion in the Logic

So, we ask again, Ms. Gandy, how can Matt Dubay have any responsibility towards a child he didn’t create? A child is created through the act of gestation, but what has that got to do with a man? Men don’t have wombs. Men don’t gestate. Remember?

This is why we can create embryos for experimentation – as long as we don’t implant them in the womb, as long as these embryos don’t gestate, it’s moral to tear them apart. Gestation is the key, remember? Not conception, not fertilization – gestation. Without gestation, it’s just potential human life. With gestation, it might become real human life.

But men don’t gestate.

Now, why would Ms. Gandy, who has vociferously supported the aforesaid line of reasoning, suddenly come to the conclusion that the act of sex creates responsibility towards a future child?

For years, we have been taught that Americans don’t understand science, and Ms. Gandy is demonstrating that ignorance in spades. Sex does not create children. Gestation does. Only women gestate. Thus, only women create children. Thus, only women have responsibilities towards children.

According to the logic of neo-science and legal abortion, men aren’t responsible for the existence of children. At all. Nada, zip, zero, nothing, goose egg, empty set.

Those are just the facts of modern biology, successfully redefined by the pro-abortion lobby and Nobel-hungry biologists. It’s just the nature of the thing, Ms. Gandy – not our fault. You insisted on the definitions. We fought against those new definitions. We lost. You won. Congratulations.

Confusion in the Ranks

Everyone who attacks Matt Dubay assumes that Mr. Dubay is somehow responsible for the existence of a child. Even abortion supporters are making this argument. But the whole concept is negated by the new science definitions, which tells us no child exists at the moment of ejaculation, nor at the moment of conception, nor even at the time of implantation, but only some later time. It is likewise negated by the new law, which tells us the woman has no responsibility toward whatever possible child might eventually exist.

So, those who argue against Matt Dubay’s claim are either (1) logically inconsistent or (2) liars out to defraud one-half of the population. And here is where the new learning concerning eminent domain ties in.

Tying It All Together

The idea that the joint act of sex creates a joint responsibility, and that this responsibility is created towards a specific person as yet unconceived and without existence, this is an old idea, an idea so old it no longer applies in this brave, new country. The courts have specifically repudiated the idea in the case of a woman who has begotten a tissue mass.

So, if the court rules against Matt Dubay, it will embrace the curious position that a child has the right to receive money from a man who had nothing to do with her existence, but does not have the right to receive life from the woman who created her.

This is perfectly in accord with the recent eminent domain decision. It doesn’t matter who owns what. What matters is this: can the state legally increase its revenues by taking property from one person and giving it to someone else? According to the Supreme Court, yes, it can. So, the state has every right to take money from any man in order to give that money to any woman with child, and thus keep both the woman and the child off state aid.

So, Matt Dubay will lose not because he had anything to do with creating a child. According to all the most advanced thinkers (which wouldn’t be us neanderthals in the pro-life movement, by the way), he had nothing to do with the creation of the child. No, Matt Dubay will lose because his wallet is subject to eminent domain.

5 comments:

Actually, you are arguing something that many courts already agree upon. If you are living with a woman who has a child by another man, you are financially responsible for the child until she finds another guy. Last touch rule applies. I guess that's where the whole "takes a village" idea began. I currently work with two guys that were caught in that situation and absolutely could not believe it - they are worried about deadbeat Dad rules for a child that they had nothing to do with their creation.

Yet another excellent demonstration of the dire need that we convert the people of the United States to Catholicism as soon as possible and establish laws founded on the Catholic faith. Our courts have no genuine concern for any of the U.S. citizenry, only for legalistic dead letters and the financial bottom line. So much for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we really believed in protecting those rights, abortion, contraception, divorce, fornication, pornography, and sodomy would be legally proscribed by laws with some teeth in them. The fact we permit such things shows our utter lack of concern for the welfare of all the children, women, and men in this land.

How long before paternity tests are done on aborted babies (oh I'm sorry fetuses) and the mother is able to get money from the father to pay for the abortion and her needed treatment for post-abortion syndrome?

Ohhh... Alison, I'd better report to God that someone is practicing creation without a license.

The last time this happened, it was a licensed creation, and the "person" responsible was a person of the Trinity, namely the Holy Spirit.

Since that time, no man has been able to create on his own. It has always required a woman.

Yes, Alison, a woman is necessary for creation. One half of the chromosomes required for life are contributed by the woman, and this makes the resulting human part her, and part him. By most standards, the little human would be both of theirs.

Well, that isn't the standard NOW uses. Their standard is "since the lump is in HER womb, SHE gets to decide". That transfers "ownership" to her, and away from him.

So really, according to today's definitions and standards, it isn't HIS and HE is not responsible for it.